So you’ve built (or bought) your luxury home, the place where you’ll raise your family, entertain guests and live your life. And if you want to make the most of your investment and maximize your enjoyment, you’ll want to ensure that your home is properly maintained. By staying on top of maintenance tasks, you’ll be able to identify and resolve potential issues early before they turn into major problems. Let’s take a look at 4 tips for luxury home maintenance.
Create a Checklist
The old edict “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail” holds true when it comes to custom home maintenance; after all, between full-time work, family time with the kids and date night with your spouse, you can see how easy it would be to overlook (or forget) to do important things like inspecting your roof every spring to identify potential winter damage.
To ensure you keep your luxury home in tip-top shape, it’s important that you have a checklist of tasks that should be completed monthly, bi-annually and annually. Please note: if you have a home maintenance contract, your maintenance professionals will create and execute on this checklist for you. However, if you decide to tackle some maintenance tasks yourself, your checklist will likely look similar to this:
Monthly custom home maintenance tasks
- Replenish water softener salt
- Clean garbage disposal
- Test sinks/tubs for clogs/slow draining and repair
- Run water in typically unused spaces (guest bathroom, in-law suite kitchen, laundry floor drain)
Bi-annual luxury home maintenance tasks
- Inspect and change your HVAC filters & service HVAC system
- Service HVAC system
- Test alarm systems (smoke, carbon monoxide, home security)
- Inspect deck/patio for disrepair; clean and repair as necessary, including resealing
- Clean gutters
- Inspect toilets, around dishwasher, inside kitchen/bathroom cabinets for leaks
Yearly home maintenance tasks
- Clean refrigerator coils
- Inspect roof and home exterior for damage and repair
- Inspect fireplace, chimney for damage
- Powerwash exterior, paved surfaces
- Drain hot water heater(s) to remove sediment
- Deep clean stove hood vent and change filter
- Clean dryer vent
- Inspect basement for leaks
- Reseal tile grout
Invest in a Maintenance Contract
If your life is busy—like many luxury homeowners—one of the smartest investments you can make is in a home maintenance contract. For example, Orren Pickell offers yearly maintenance contracts for homes we build as well as homes built by other companies. Skilled Orren Pickell contractors work to maintain every aspect of your home, from ensuring your gutters are clean and not holding water to testing and maintaining your HVAC system so it’s ready to go when temperatures turn chilly.
Investing in a maintenance contract with the company that built your luxury home often has additional benefits. Your home builder’s maintenance team will have access to all of your home’s specifics—like what model jetted tub is in your master bathroom, what brand and shade of stain is used on your kitchen cabinets and the details on your home’s HVAC system. Rather than guessing at the best solution for maintenance and repair, these professionals have access to all of the information they need to make a fully informed decision.
Choosing to take advantage of a maintenance contract with a luxury home builder means that you get to benefit from the knowledge they gain working in other luxury homes of a similar caliber; for example, if a maintenance technician identifies an issue in the guest bathroom plumbing at one home s/he can proactively check for a similar issue in other homes, potentially preventing problems before they occur.
Plan Ahead for Emergency Situations
Regular maintenance of your luxury home is important, but it’s also important that you have a plan in place for when the unexpected occurs. Proper preparation is key when it comes to keeping a small issue from turning into a big problem. Consider this: if a burst water pipe is flooding your powder room mere hours before you’re expecting company, who would you call? If you handle home maintenance issues yourself, you’d likely be scrambling to find the name of the plumber who you contracted to fix your leaky sink last year—only to find out he’s out of town and unavailable. But if you have a home maintenance contract, you need only make one single call, any time of the day or night, to summon the help you need.
If 24/7 on-call service by trusted contractors is important to you, then a maintenance contract with a company like Orren Pickell that offers round-the-clock emergency service is your best bet. By investing in a maintenance contract you can relax, confident that any issues that arise will be dealt with quickly and professionally.
Go Beyond Maintenance
Certainly, as a homeowner, you have a vested interest in keeping your home looking and functioning in top shape. But even if your cleaning and maintenance professionals follow a regular schedule to care for your home, there are likely to be times that you want some additional sprucing up.
Maybe you’re hosting a charity gala fundraiser in your home and want every last detail to be extra perfect? Or perhaps your extended family is coming for an extended visit and you want to make sure they feel as comfortable as possible? In situations like these, your maintenance professionals can help with a variety of home beautification services that will make your home really shine.
Is your home’s exterior feeling a little tired? Has winter weather wreaked havoc on your windows and they need extra sparkle? And is your fireplace (or outdoor firepit) ready to be used in a safe and attractive manner? Your home maintenance professionals can help you prepare your home for any situation, either having their qualified team members perform inspections, cleanings and repairs or coordinating a trusted contractor to take care of things. Rather than worry about coordinating a chimney sweep, window washer and powerwashing professional, you can focus on planning the details of your event or visit; your maintenance professional will serve to manage all of the beautification and improvement projects, ensuring that they are completed in a timely manner that will meet or exceed your high standards.
Maintenance is Key to Maximizing Your Investment
To get the most from your luxury home investment, it’s important that you properly maintain it. If you opt to do some maintenance tasks yourself, creating a checklist is a great way to ensure that important tasks aren’t overlooked. But many busy homeowners opt to leave these tasks to the professionals, hiring maintenance staff to handle routine maintenance and special requests, as well as to be on call in emergency situations. Hiring the right professionals ensures your home stays in great shape and allows you to focus on what’s really important: enjoying living in your beautiful custom home.
